How FDR armed Stalin

[gobose]

A virtually unknown fact is that FDR was "THE" man who armed Stalin up until 1945. Through FDR's assistance, Stalin was able to beat Germany but more importantly, destroy the lives of over 100 million Europeans.

Under the Marshall act, the USA provided over $250 million in aid to rebuild WESTERN Europe. But did you know that FDR gave Stalin over $2 BILLION in military aid that was used to enslave EASTERN Europe?

Here are just a few of the memos between these two monsters:

====================================

pp. 37-38

Received on October 16, /942

F. ROOSEVELT TO J. V. STALIN



I am glad to inform you, in response to your request, that the items involved can be made available for shipment as follows:

Wheat; two million short tons during the remainder of the protocol year" at approximately equal monthly rates.

Trucks; 8,000 to 10,000 per month.

Explosives; 4,000 short tons in November and 5,000 tons per month thereafter.

Meat; 15,000 tons per month.

Canned Meat; 10,000 tons per month.

Lard; 12,000 tons per month.

Soap Stock; 5,000 tons per month.

Vegetable Oil; 10,000 tons per month.

I will advise you at an early date of the aluminum shipments which I am still exploring.

I have given orders that no effort be spared to keep our routes fully supplied with ships and cargo in conformity with your desires as to priorities on our commitments to you.

=========================================

p. 19

Received on February 11, 1942

SECRET AND PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT TO Mr. STALIN

For January and February our shipments have included and will include 449 light tanks, 408 medium tanks, 244 fighter planes, 24 B-25's, and 233 A-20's.

I realize the importance of getting our supplies to you at the earliest possible date and every effort is being made to get shipments off.

The reports here indicate that you are getting on well in pushing back the Nazis.

Although we are having our immediate troubles in the Far East, I believe that we will have that area reinforced in the near future to such an extent that we can stop the Japs, but we are prepared for some further setbacks.

=========================================

pp. 20-21

Sent on February 18, 1942

J. V. STALIN TO F. ROOSEVELT

This is to acknowledge receipt of yours of February 13 . I should like first of all to point out that I share your conviction that the efforts of the new U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, Admiral Standley, whom you hold in such high esteem, to bring our two countries still closer together, will be crowned with success.

Your decision, Mr. President, to grant the Government of the U.S.S.R. another $1,000,000,000 under the Lend-Lease Act on the same terms as the first $1,000,000,000, is accepted by the Soviet Government with sincere gratitude. With reference to the matter raised by you I would like to say that, in order not to delay decision, the Soviet Government will not at the moment raise the matter of revising the terms for the second $1,000,000,000 to be granted to the Soviet Union nor call for taking due account of the extreme strain placed on the U.S.S.R. by the war against our common foe. At the same time I fully agree with you and hope that later we shall jointly fix the moment when it will be mutually desirable to revise the financial agreements now being concluded, in order to take special account of the circumstances pointed out above.

I take this opportunity to draw your attention to the fact that in using the loan extended to the U.S.S.R. the appropriate Soviet agencies are encountering great difficulties as far as shipping the munitions and materials purchased in the U.S.A. is concerned. In these circumstances we think that the most useful system is the one effectively used in shipping munitions from Britain to Archangel, a system not introduced so far with regard to supplies from the U.S.A. In keeping with this system the British military authorities supplying the munitions and materials select the ships, supervise their loading in harbor and convoying to the ports of destination. The Soviet Government would be most grateful if the same system of delivering munitions and convoying the ships to Soviet harbours were adopted by the U.S. Government.

Yours very sincerely,

J. STALIN

========================================

And what did FDR say to Churchill when the Poles were fighting the Germans in the streets of Warsaw?

He told Churchill and the Poles to go fck themselves.

And, yet, today, Poles in the USA pay homage to the likes of FDR; and Obama when he gives Polish leaders (Walesa) the middle one.

Many Polish-Americans need to hang their heads in shame for glorifying a monster like Obama in 2012 when it comes to Poland and its history.

[Jaga]

The US helped Soviets against Nazi Germany, this is quite known.

I think that this type of argumentation should be used to show that Ronald Reagan and his administration delivered arms to Osama in order to defend against Soviets in Afghanistan. But who wants to go back to the history and make it worse than it was? I don't....

[gobose]

Dec 31, 2012 21:31:33 GMT -7 Jaga said:

The US helped Soviets against Nazi Germany, this is quite known.

I think that this type of argumentation should be used to show that Ronald Reagan and his administration delivered arms to Osama in order to defend against Soviets in Afghanistan. But who wants to go back to the history and make it worse than it was? I don't....

Apples and oranges.

It was Jimmy Carter who armed the Afghan's and those weapons bled through to the Taliban, Osama etc., But the scale is absurdly small in comparison to what FDR did for Stalin.

History on FDR and Stalin is virtually unknown by the population because the mass media has buried it. So, the news about FDR and Stalin is quite fresh relative to how FDR detroyed Eastern Europe.

It is the Poles who should be setting party politics aside and demanding that the record be set straight on how FDR destroyed Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe.

But who is to say that Hitler was worse than Stalin? The stats clearly show that Stalin murdered far more people during his reign than Hitler. He was never a friend of the USA (despite the delusional position taken by FDR) and we fought him/his administration from 1945 until 1990+.

[pieter]

Gobose and Jaga,

It was a develish dilemma in the fourties, arming the Sovjets or losing from Nazi Germany. It is easily to judge 70 years later. Winston Churchill nor many Americans were especially fond of Stalin or the SovjetUnion (I don't talk about Roosevelt, who liked Stalin and trusted him), but the situation on the Western front wasn't especially rose-coloured. The Germans and their Axis allies were superior in the militairy perspective, the combination of Nazi-Germany in the West (with hundreds of thousands of collaborators in European countries: Dutch, Danish, Flemish, Wallon and French Waffen-SS, Hungarians, Rumanians, and the Russian, Ukrainian and Baltic troops that fought on the Nazi side). The German Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine was for a large part of the Second World War superior on the Western- and Eastern front. The danger of a Nazi dominated and "gleichgeschaltet" ("forcible-coordination"), "Deutschfreundlich" and aryanised Europe (= the total destruction, annihilation and enslavement of Jews, Gypsies, Poles and other Slavs) was very near.

In the same time there was the Sovjet or Stalinist version of Gleichschaltung in the European states that were Stalinised at the end of the war and during the years 1945-1956. The Stalinist terror of these years in the SovjetUnion, East-Germany (the DDR), Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania, Albania is often ignored in Western history teachings. The NKVD (KGB) terror was sinular to that of the Gestapo, SD (Sicherheitsdients) and other Nazi elimination (murder) forces. It think that to some extend the Nazi's learned from the Cheka and NKVD from Feliks Dzierżyński (Polish), Vyacheslav Menzhinsky (Polish), Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov, and last but not least Lavrenty Beria.


Lavrenty Beria the notorious chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus (NKVD) under Joseph Stalin from 1938 until 1946. He remained a very powerful Sovjet Stalinist until his death in 1953.

Intelligence activities of the Sovjet NKVD included the establishment of the People's Republic of Poland and earlier its communist party along with training activists, during World War II. The first President of Poland after the war was Bolesław Bierut, an NKVD agent.


Bolesław Bierut, Stalinist leader of Poland. From 1947 to 1952, he served as President and then (after the abolition of the Presidency with the creation of the People's Republic of Poland) Prime Minister. He was also the first Secretary General of the ruling Polish United Workers Party from 1948 to 1956.



Winston Churchill actually wanted to attack the SovjetUnion at the end of the Second World War with defeated Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS troops who would in his plan fight together with Americans and British armies against the Red Army. But this would have been impossible in Europe, where the hatred and distrust of the Germans was to large. Patton and his troops were already in Prague, Czechia, they easily could have penetrated Central- and Eastern-Europe further.

Read this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable / pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operacja_Unthinkable

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka / pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czeka
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGPU / pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Państwowy_Zarząd_Polityczny_przy_NKWD_RFSRR
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD / pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKWD

[pieter]

Winston Churchill



Formation of the “grand alliance”

When Hitler launched his sudden attack on the Soviet Union, Churchill’s response was swift and unequivocal. In a broadcast on June 22, 1941, while refusing to “unsay” any of his earlier criticisms of Communism, he insisted that “the Russian danger . . . is our danger” and pledged aid to the Russian people. Henceforth, it was his policy to construct a “grand alliance” incorporating the Soviet Union and the United States. But it took until May 1942 to negotiate a 20-year Anglo-Soviet pact of mutual assistance.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941) altered, in Churchill’s eyes, the whole prospect of the war. He went at once to Washington, D.C., and, with Roosevelt, hammered out a set of Anglo-American accords: the pooling of both countries’ military and economic resources under combined boards and a combined chiefs of staff; the establishment of unity of command in all theatres of war; and agreement on the basic strategy that the defeat of Germany should have priority over the defeat of Japan. The grand alliance had now come into being. Churchill could claim to be its principal architect. Safeguarding it was the primary concern of his next three and a half years.

In protecting the alliance, the respect and affection between him and Roosevelt were of crucial importance. They alone enabled Churchill, in the face of relentless pressure from Stalin and ardent advocacy by the U.S. chiefs of staff, to secure the rejection of the “second front” in 1942, a project he regarded as premature and costly. In August 1942 Churchill himself flew to Moscow to advise Stalin of the decision and to bear the brunt of his displeasure. At home, too, he came under fire in 1942: first in January after the reverses in Malaya and the Far East and later in June when Tobruk in North Africa fell to the Germans, but on neither occasion did his critics muster serious support in Parliament. The year 1942 saw some reconstruction of the Cabinet in a “leftward” direction, which was reflected in the adoption in 1943 of Lord Beveridge’s plan for comprehensive social insurance, endorsed by Churchill as a logical extension of the Liberal reforms of 1911.



Military successes and political problems

The Allied landings in North Africa necessitated a fresh meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt, this time in Casablanca in January 1943. There Churchill argued for an early, full-scale attack on “the under-belly of the Axis” but won only a grudging acquiescence from the Americans. There too was evolved the “unconditional surrender” formula of debatable wisdom. Churchill paid the price for his intensive travel (including Tripoli, Turkey, and Algeria) by an attack of pneumonia, for which, however, he allowed only the briefest of respites. In May he was in Washington again, arguing against persistent American aversion to his “under-belly” strategy; in August he was at Quebec, working out the plans for Operation Overlord, the cross-Channel assault. When he learned that the Americans were planning a large-scale invasion of Burma in 1944, his fears that their joint resources would not be adequate for a successful invasion of Normandy were revived.



In November 1943 at Cairo he urged on Roosevelt priority for further Mediterranean offensives, but at Tehrān in the first “Big Three” meeting, he failed to retain Roosevelt’s adherence to a completely united Anglo-American front. Roosevelt, though he consulted in private with Stalin, refused to see Churchill alone; for all their friendship there was also an element of rivalry between the two Western leaders that Stalin skillfully exploited. On the issue of Allied offensive drives into southern Europe, Churchill was outvoted. Throughout the meetings Churchill had been unwell, and on his way home he came down again with pneumonia. Though recovery was rapid, it was mid-January 1944 before convalescence was complete. By May he was proposing to watch the D-Day assaults from a battle cruiser; only the King’s personal plea dissuaded him.



Insistence on military success did not, for Churchill, mean indifference to its political implications. After the Quebec conference in September 1944, he flew to Moscow to try to conciliate the Russians and the Poles and to get an agreed division of spheres of influence in the Balkans that would protect as much of them as possible from Communism. In Greece he used British forces to thwart a Communist takeover and at Christmas flew to Athens to effect a settlement. Much of what passed at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, including the Far East settlement, concerned only Roosevelt and Stalin, and Churchill did not interfere. He fought to save the Poles but saw clearly enough that there was no way to force the Soviets to keep their promises. Realizing this, he urged the United States to allow the Allied forces to thrust as far into eastern Europe as possible before the Russian armies should fill the vacuum left by German power, but he could not win over Roosevelt, Vice Pres. Harry S. Truman, or their generals to his views. He went to Potsdam in July in a worried mood. But in the final decisions of the conference he had no part; halfway through, when news came of his government’s defeat in parliamentary elections, he had to return to England and tender his resignation.


Yalta


Sometimes images tell a story. Here you see a serious looking Churchill, a quite sad looking Roosevelt (he died shortly after) and a smiling Stalin.

www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/117269/Sir-Winston-Churchill/60596/Formation-of-the-grand-alliance

[gobose]

Pieter,

Great info! I beleive you reside in Europe and have a more balanced look at WWII.

In the USA, there is virtually nothing written about FDR signing off Eastern Europe to Stalin and that he was totally "duped" by Stalin.

To me, it was one of, if not, the greatest betrayals commited by a single man, on so many people, for so long. FDR sent Poland to their doom, and in the USA, virtually nothing is said about it.

Stalin made a fool of FDR, and stole half of Europe in the process. The Poles were royally screwed by FDR. And as you state, FDR defened, and protected, Stalin from Churchill, Patton, the Wehrmacht and others.

There was no excuse for turning over that much (any) territory to Stalin. FDR was a cold hearted, callous, man who had many options both militarily and politcally to have sent Stalin back to his original borders. But FDR liked Stalin more than he did Churchill or Patton.

Stalin was an ALLY of Hitler until 1941. Germany declared war on Stalin, so it was Stalin's fight, not ours. Stalin was never an ally of the USA, and was simply fighting an invading army. Had Hitler not invaded Russia, Stalin would have remained staunchly in Hitler's corner. Let's not forget, that Hitler and Stalin jointly planned the invasion of Poland.

FDR threw Poland under the bus, and the Poles of today, tell me to leave sleeping dogs lie, and move on. Same thing my folks told me about polack jokes for some 20 years.

FDR is a God to the Democrat's, and party loyalty reigns supreme over uncovering dirty truths about the monster.

[karl]

Interesting reading of these various presentation of the war. For the most part, I will refrain from comment, but perhaps a bit of addition for as information.

It would appear in an after the fact of events, the Allies made a pact with the devil out of desperation.

Within the scope of necessity to make use of the Soviet Armed forces, with this, the needs of Stalinist government of supplies and materials to continue prosecution of the war. Was to effect into action, of a further of the Land Lease Act. This was to convoy by ship from allied bases to the arctic bases of Soviet Union.

Whilst well understood of the risk, non-the-less, it was done, but at great expense at the peril of ships, crews, and cargo.

If to take full account of the simple cost of the vessel alone fully equipped with suitable machinery/navigational equipment/fuel at a war time critical supply/cost of crew and Capitain and,,the cargo. If sunk, the loss is astronomical in terms of lives and if insured against loss in a combat area.

The following url is the underwater machines with air cover used in destruction of many of these vessels of convoy PQ and QP nomenclature.

uboat.net/ops/convoys/convoys.php?convoy=PQ-17

Karl

[pieter]

Franklin D. Roosevelt



Foreign policy

By 1939 foreign policy was overshadowing domestic policy. From the beginning of his presidency, Roosevelt had been deeply involved in foreign-policy questions. Although he refused to support international currency stabilization at the London Economic Conference in 1933, by 1936 he had stabilized the dollar and concluded stabilization agreements with Great Britain and France. Roosevelt extended American recognition to the government of the Soviet Union, launched the Good Neighbor Policy to improve U.S. relations with Latin America, and backed reciprocal agreements to lower trade barriers between the U.S. and other countries.

Congress, however, was dominated by isolationists who believed that American entry into World War I had been mistaken and who were determined to prevent the United States from being drawn into another European war. Beginning with the Neutrality Act of 1935, Congress passed a series of laws designed to minimize American involvement with belligerent nations. Roosevelt accepted the neutrality laws but at the same time warned Americans of the danger of remaining isolated from a world increasingly menaced by *the dictatorial regimes in Germany, Italy, and Japan. Speaking in Chicago in October 1937, he proposed that peace-loving nations make concerted efforts to quarantine aggressors. Although he seemed to mean nothing more drastic than breaking off diplomatic relations, the proposal created such alarm throughout the country that he quickly backed away from even this modest level of international involvement. Then, in December, the Japanese sank an American gunboat, the USS Panay, on the Yangtze River in China. Most Americans feared that the attack would lead to war, and they were pleased when Roosevelt accepted Japan’s apologies.

When World War II broke out in Europe in September 1939, Roosevelt called Congress into special session to revise the neutrality acts to permit belligerents—i.e., Britain and France—to buy American arms on a “cash-and-carry” basis; over the objections of isolationists, the cash-and-carry policy was enacted. When France fell to the Germans in the spring and early summer of 1940, and Britain was left alone to face the Nazi war machine, Roosevelt convinced Congress to intensify defense preparations and to support Britain with “all aid short of war.” In the fall of that year Roosevelt sent 50 older destroyers to Britain, which feared an imminent German invasion, in exchange for eight naval bases.

The third and fourth terms

The swap of ships for bases took place during the 1940 presidential election campaign. Earlier in the year the Democrats had nominated Roosevelt for a third term, even though his election would break the two-term tradition honoured since the presidency of George Washington. The Republican nominee, Wendell L. Willkie, represented a departure from the isolationist-dominated Republican Party, and the two candidates agreed on most foreign-policy issues, including increased military aid to Britain. On election day, Roosevelt defeated Willkie soundly—by 27 million to 22 million popular votes—though his margin of victory was less than it had been in 1932 and 1936. Roosevelt’s support was reduced by a number of factors, including the court-packing scheme, the attempted “purge” of conservative Democrats in 1938, the breaking of the two-term tradition, and fears that he would lead the nation into war.


Republican presidential candidate, Wendell L. Willkie

By inauguration day in 1941, Britain was running out of cash and finding it increasingly difficult—owing to German submarine attacks—to carry American arms across the Atlantic. In March 1941, after a bitter debate in Congress, Roosevelt obtained passage of the Lend-Lease Act, which enabled the United States to accept noncash payment for military and other aid to Britain and its allies. Later that year he authorized the United States Navy to provide protection for lend-lease shipments, and in the fall he instructed the navy to “shoot on sight” at German submarines. All these actions moved the United States closer to actual belligerency with Germany.

In August 1941, on a battleship off Newfoundland, Canada, Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill issued a joint statement, the Atlantic Charter, in which they pledged their countries to the goal of achieving “the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny.” Reminiscent of the Four Freedoms that Roosevelt outlined in his annual message to Congress in January 1941, the statement disclaimed territorial aggrandizement and affirmed a commitment to national self-determination, freedom of the seas, freedom from want and fear, greater economic opportunities, and disarmament of all aggressor nations.


Churchill and Roosevelt meet secretly on a warship (off Newfoundland) and work out the details and then proclaim the Atlantic Charter

Attack on Pearl Harbor

Yet it was in the Pacific rather than the Atlantic that war came to the United States. When Japan joined the Axis powers of Germany and Italy, Roosevelt began to restrict exports to Japan of supplies essential to making war. Throughout 1941, Japan negotiated with the United States, seeking restoration of trade in those supplies, particularly petroleum products. When the negotiations failed to produce agreement, Japanese military leaders began to plan an attack on the United States. According to one school of thought, this was exactly what Roosevelt wanted, for, by backing Japan into a corner and forcing it to make war on the United States, the president could then enter the European war in defense of Britain—the so-called “back door to war” theory. This controversial hypothesis continues to be debated today.

By the end of November, Roosevelt knew that an attack was imminent (the United States had broken the Japanese code), but he was uncertain where it would take place. To his great surprise, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, destroying nearly the entire U.S. Pacific fleet and hundreds of airplanes and killing about 2,500 military personnel and civilians. On December 8, at Roosevelt’s request, Congress declared war on Japan; on December 11 Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.


President Roosevelt declares war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbour

At a press conference in December 1943, Roosevelt asserted that “Dr. New Deal” had been replaced by “Dr. Win the War.” The many New Deal agencies designed to provide employment during the Great Depression rapidly disappeared as war mobilization created more jobs than there were people to fill them. Full economic recovery, which had resisted Roosevelt’s efforts throughout the 1930s, suddenly came about as a consequence of massive government spending on war production in the early 1940s.

Relations with the Allies

From the start of American involvement in World War II, Roosevelt took the lead in establishing a grand alliance among all countries fighting the Axis powers. He met with Churchill in a number of wartime conferences at which differences were settled amicably. One early difference centred upon the question of an invasion of France. Churchill wanted to postpone such an invasion until Nazi forces had been weakened, and his view prevailed until the great Normandy Invasion was finally launched on “D-Day,” June 6, 1944. Meanwhile, American and British forces invaded North Africa in November 1942, Sicily in July 1943, and Italy in September 1943.

Relations with the Soviet Union posed a difficult problem for Roosevelt. Throughout the war the Soviet Union accepted large quantities of lend-lease supplies but seldom divulged its military plans or acted in coordination with its Western allies. Roosevelt, believing that the maintenance of peace after the war depended on friendly relations with the Soviet Union, hoped to win the confidence of Joseph Stalin. He, Stalin, and Churchill seemed to get along well when they met at Tehrān in November 1943. By the time the “Big Three” met again at the Yalta Conference in the Crimea, U.S.S.R., in February 1945, the war in Europe was almost over. At Yalta, Roosevelt secured Stalin’s commitment to enter the war against Japan soon after Germany’s surrender and to establish democratic governments in the nations of Central- and eastern Europe occupied by Soviet troops. Stalin kept his pledge concerning Japan but proceeded to impose Soviet satellite governments throughout eastern Europe.


Joseph Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt at the Tehran Conference in 1943.

Declining health and death

Roosevelt had been suffering from advanced arteriosclerosis for more than a year before the Yalta Conference. His political opponents had tried to make much of his obviously declining health during the campaign of 1944, when he ran for a fourth term against Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York. But Roosevelt campaigned actively and won the election by a popular vote of 25 million to 22 million and an electoral college vote of 432 to 99. By the time of his return from Yalta, however, he was so weak that for the first time in his presidency he spoke to Congress while sitting down. Early in April 1945 he traveled to his cottage in Warm Springs, Georgia—the “Little White House”—to rest. On the afternoon of April 12, while sitting for a portrait, he suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage, and he died a few hours later. With him at his death were two cousins, Laura Delano and Margaret Suckley, and Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd (by then a widow), with whom he had renewed his relationship a few years before.

P.S.- * Roosevelt forgot to mention the totalitarian, autocratic and dictatorial regime of Joseph Stalin.

[gobose]

Pieter,

Be a little careful here in proposing that the Republicans had any say in the matter of WWII.

Remember, that from 1937 to 1941 the Congress of the USA looked like this:

House of Representatives:

Democrats: 346 seats.

Republicans: 89 seats.

Democrats had 100% control.

The US Senate:

Democrats: 80 seats.

Republicans: 16 seats

Democrats had 100% control.

President: Democrat

So, the Democrats had 100% control of the Federal Government.

It was this Democrat controlled government that allowed Hitler and Stalin to rise to such power.

They refused to become involved in WWII despite many, many pleas from Churchill.

Whether all, or any, of the Republicans were aye, or nay, doesn't matter, as they had no voice.

The military was so ill-equipped under FDR, that training for our troops was done with wooden stock cut to resemble a rifle. We were 100% unprepared in the late 30's and early 1940's to fight either Japan or Germany.

[gobose]

Two years earlier, America’s military preparedness was not that of a nation expecting to go to war. In 1939, the United States Army ranked thirty-ninth in the world, possessing a cavalry force of fifty thousand and using horses to pull the artillery.

And who is responsible for this dismal state of our military:

In 1933 - 1937 the Republicans were outnumbered by Democrats 313 to 117 in the House and 60 to 35 in the Senate.

So, from 1933 onwards, the Democrats had 100% control (2/3 of the vote) of the Federal Government.

That's why we used wooden toy rifles and horses to pull artillery. Our military was in shambles and it stayed that way even after Hitler invaded Poland.

And ever since then, the Democrats scream about bringing the USA back to this proud FDR heritage and ranking.

[pieter]

Jan 2, 2013 7:29:46 GMT -7 gobose said:

Pieter,

Be a little careful here in proposing that the Republicans had any say in the matter of WWII.

Remember, that from 1937 to 1941 the Congress of the USA looked like this:

House of Representatives:

Democrats: 346 seats.

Republicans: 89 seats.

Democrats had 100% control.

The US Senate:

Democrats: 80 seats.

Republicans: 16 seats

Democrats had 100% control.

President: Democrat

So, the Democrats had 100% control of the Federal Government.

It was this Democrat controlled government that allowed Hitler and Stalin to rise to such power.

They refused to become involved in WWII despite many, many pleas from Churchill.

Whether all, or any, of the Republicans were aye, or nay, doesn't matter, as they had no voice.

The military was so ill-equipped under FDR, that training for our troops was done with wooden stock cut to resemble a rifle. We were 100% unprepared in the late 30's and early 1940's to fight either Japan or Germany.

You are right ofcourse about the Democratic majority and the tiny Republican minority. But we shouldn't forget that a lot of Democrats back then were arch-conservative, rightwing, Southern-Democrats.
Racists, rednecks, Dixiecrats. If you look at a map back then you see that a majority of the American states were colored blue


Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Willkie/McNary, Blue denotes those won by Roosevelt/Wallace. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.

United States presidential election, 1940


President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Republican candidate Wendell Willkie

The United States presidential election of 1940 was the 39th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 5, 1940. The election was fought in the shadow of World War II (in Europe) as the United States was emerging from the Great Depression. Incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), the Democratic candidate, broke with tradition and ran for a third term, which became a major issue. The surprise Republican candidate was maverick businessman Wendell Willkie, a dark horse who crusaded against Roosevelt's perceived failure to end the Depression and his supposed eagerness for war. Roosevelt, acutely aware of strong isolationist sentiment in the U.S., promised there would be no involvement in foreign wars if he were re-elected. Willkie conducted an energetic campaign and managed to revive Republican strength in areas of the Midwest and Northeast. However, Roosevelt won a comfortable victory by building strong support from labor unions, urban political machines, ethnic voters, and the traditionally Democratic Solid South.
The ratification of the 22nd Amendment in 1951 makes this election the only occasion in American history in which a candidate was elected to a third term as president. Roosevelt would go on to win election to a fourth term in 1944, before dying less than three months into that term.


Results by county explicitly indicating the percentage for the winning candidate. Shades of blue are for Roosevelt (Democratic) and shades of red are for Willkie (Republican).

[gobose]

At the end of the day, FDR's - Democrats ruled the party. And like Democrats today, are anxious to take the US military back to the good ol' days of FDR.

It is no exaggeration that FDR's/Democrats drove the US military into the ground knowing that Hitler was amassing a huge army. Our GI's trained with wooden toy rifles because FDR refused to maintain adequate arms/ammunition and technological advances.

It is true, that the Jim Crow South was 100% Democrat. MLK and his supporters were arrested, beaten, and maligned by Democrats. That's another story that has slipped through the pages of our history under the guise of "Whites" did these things.

A very slick move to alleviate the blame on the Democrat Party but they were 100% responsible for the hangings, beatings etc.,

Pieter, if the South had been Republican, then CNN and the NY Times would have made sure to tell you that over and over again to ad nauseum.

In the USA, political parties are controlled by very few people. FDR surrounded himself with like minded Democrats and they controlled the purse strings, legislative agenda etc., And deviation from that small group is meaningless.

Whenever you have one party in total control, as we had under FDR, they are fully responsible for spending, taxation, and direction. The Republicans could bark a little but they were ignored. FDR ruled over the USA and Poland and Eastern Europe paid a very, very, heavy price.

[pieter]

Gobose,

I am not so positive about the democratic party back then. I have some reason for that. Partly it is because I don't like large powerconcentrations in the hands of one power. Secondly I don't like a total domination of collectivism, which the New Deal seemed to be. I don't liked forced Egalitarianism, because I believe that to a certain degree classes are a healthy development in human evolution and art part of the nature of mankind. There is a reason for the existance of a highclass, middle class and low class (working class) in our society. We need farmers, fishermen, workers, shop keepers and employee's (middle class), businesspeople, merchants, stock brokers, bankers, family owned companies, large- middle big and small companies. You correctly said that the Eastern- and Central-European socialist states that were run by communist parties had worse economies and lower living standards than the West-European countries, which were free, democratic and capitalist.

Back to the Democratic party. What I also didn't liked was the Clientelism of the democratic party back then. Clientelism is the exchange of goods and services for political support. It is a political system at the heart of which is an asymmetric relationship between groups of political actors described as patrons and clients and political parties. Richard Graham has defined clientelism as a set of actions based on the principle take there, give here, with the practice allowing both clients and patrons to gain advantage from the other's support. Moreover, clientelism is "exchange systems where voters exchange political support for various outputs of the public decision-making process." By the way I don't think that the Republican party is totally free of clientelism. I am not a fan of the GOP.
Part of that clientelism were the connections between corrupt Democratic politicians in Chicago, New York and probably Boston and Italian-American maffia guys and Irish gangsters. That connection existed via the unions which were controlled, oppressed and terrorized by the Mob. Think about the Teamsters. The problem was that the democratic party had strong traditional ties with Italian-Americans and Irish Americans (and ofcourse not all Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans were gangsters, but there was a connection). The crisis (Depression years) were a good time for organised crime, trafficking, contrabande, gambling, extortion and corruption. If people are poor, hungry and desperate they easily go the wrong way. In the same time I have to admid that I don't have a strong knowledge of the Republican party back then and if there was corruption and maffia connections with the Republican party too? The democratic party had to much power then. The problem with the USA is that it is a Bipartisan state and that a third party and party candidate has never a chance.

That's a pity, because Americans have no Libertarian, Christian-democratic, Reform party or Independant choice. Because an independent candidate never wins!

Cheers,
Pieter

[Jaga]

Gobose,

referring to FDR and his lack of support for Poland, we actually discussed it in the past. Many Poles are upset about it. FDR was very sick then and he had to help Stalin (as well as Churchill, who you probably consider a good guy), so that Nazi Germany would not win the war.

Poland was unfortunately compromised. Not sure whether FDR could do it differently. It was long time ago. At least FDR is one of these people who did lots of good for America.

I am not sure what your sources are, but you probably watch too much FoxNews which really skewes your perspective.